Tag Archives: Giant

MMT’s gotta a new bike…woo hoo!!

Dear Rouleurs,

After many frustrating hours of window shopping MMT has finally purchased a new bike. Woo hoo!!! MMT has joined the ranks of cyclists that now own something loosely referred to as a gravel bike. MMT will revisit that theme later. The new bike is a 2021 Giant Content AR1. The AR bit stands for ‘All Road’.

Essentially was looking for a better quality commuter road bike that could handle more sedate offroad paths like railtrails. The other key requirement to The Giant Contend provides this via its relaxed geometry aluminium frame that can fit tyres up 38mm on 700c rims. The Contend comes with 32mm tubeless tyres, which MMT is having to get used to. MMT is struggling with the idea of running tyres at 50-65psi and not being able to easily fix punctures.

The other main requirement was for the bike have a drive train compatible with MMT’s Tacx Neo 2 trainer. MMT has Shimano Ultegra (50-34 and 11-32) on his Domane and trainer and wanted similiar groupset for reasons of compatibility. Happily, the Giant Contend is equipped with 105 (50-34 and 11-34) and not the more gravel popular GRX. Its also has hydraulic disc brakes…hooray.

Here’s the spec details plundered from Bikeradar.com

  • Shimano 105 11-speed groupset with a non-series RS510 chainset
  • Shimano 105 hydraulic disc brakes
  • Giant P-R2 Disc wheelset
  • Giant Gavia Fondo 2 32mm tyres
  • Giant D-Fuse carbon seatpost
  • Giant D-Fuse D-shaped handlebars for increased comfort
  • 9.62kg claimed weight (medium)
  • note: that that its also has carbon fibre forks
  • £1,499 / $US1,550 / $AUD $2,499

It took MMT a long time to track down this bike. It first appeared on MMT’s radar late last year and has had generally favourable reviews. This one by Dave Rome at CyclingTips was one that convinced MMT, this was the correct choice.

Independant reviewers of the Contend have had consistent gripes.

a) The 105 shifters seem to rattle quite loudly on uneven surfaces – this is completely true. In fact, after riding super quiet and smooth Ultegra, its quite unnerving. MMT felt like that some bit of the bike was going to fall off.

b) The standard Giant tyres are a bit crap – the Gavia Fondo 2 tubeless aren’t very supple/grippy. Not sure about that one, they look more like commuter tyres than out and out gravel. So as long as they last and don’t puncture MMT can live with them.

c) The standard Giant rims are heavy – this is also true, the rims are heavy and the spokes are steel. A quick Google search suggests they weight just over 2.1 kgs. Hopefully this means they are indestructible and if broken cheap and easy to fix.

MMT’s other two gripes are that:

d) The Approach saddle just feels weird. Its quite hard and wide compared to the Selle C2 or quite firm Trek Montrose that MMT has placed his posterior on recently. If MMT could find a replacement Selle that was sub-$150 he would have bought it by now, and

e) The Shimano 105 shifter hoods are significantly bigger than the Ultegra hoods and feel quite bulbous to grip.

However this is all part and parcel of deciding which compromises you can live with on a sub-$2,500 bike. Coming back to Dave Rome’s review, fundamentally the bike is sound, has great quality running gear, a few minor quirks and is a bit heavy. It also only comes in a single colour…midnight blue. That sounds like a fair trade to MMT.

Until next time, ride safe, stay safe

MMT

The correct number of bikes to own

Dear Roulers,

I’ve been having a terrible run of outs with mechanical failures.  My Villier still isn’t back from the workshop due to the non-arrival of parts from whoever the local Conagolo dealer is….bummer.  The yesterday on my afternoon commute home I discovered that the back wheel of Cannondale has a whopping big buckle.

I’ll be buggered if I can figure out how exactly, I did that.  The buckle was so bad that it felt like the hub may have been shot.  Either way I’m be experiencing my own personal walk of shame to the bike shop with yet another tale of woe.  20141020-GiantSedona-SMLHowever the upside is that I still do have a third string bike, my Giant Sedona, purchased in 1997, that bike is heading towards 20 years old. The only bits that I’ve replaced on it have been the saddle twice, the pedals for some shiny one sided SPD clip-ins, the bottle cage and grippy tyres for some slicks.  Its showing signs of age with scratches and rust marks, but it’s still going strong.

I took it out for a ride with my wife this morning and was able to keep up with her on her much newer Giant Defy.  It must have looked a bit odd to the passing pelotons. It’s amazing the difference in power you can put into the bottom bracket of rigid frame bike.  By comparison the head shok Cannondale seemed to be about 2 to 3km slower on the same ride last week. All I can say is thank God I ignored my wife and kept my third string bike. It simply reminds me of the often quoted Velominati law of bike ownership ->

 Rule #12: The correct number of bikes to own is n+1

On http://abicycleculture.tumblr.com/, I found a variation of the law provided by Corkgrips, who clearly has the same domestic “issues”, that I have:

While the minimum number of bikes one should own is three, the correct number is n+1, where n is the number of bikes currently owned.  This equation may also be re-written as s-1, where s is the number of bikes owned that would result in separation from your partner….from Velominati’s Rules

Until next time, see you on the roads.